Even if you have never made any plans in your life, still you have managed projects. Here is a short list of such projects:
In order to cook dinner, one has to decide who will go shopping and what should be bought, who will cook dinner and how long and, finally, who will wash the dishes after the dinner. And now tell me, please, how often you have to run to the shop if the list of the necessary products hasn’t been made correctly or hasn’t been made at all.
If you have invited very important guests, your dinner not prepared in time can derail negotiations or embarrass your guests and the evening will be wholly bad. And who doesn’t know the consequences of prolonged repair works? In these cases quarrels and scandals in the family are guaranteed.
By definition, every project has an aim, beginning and deadline. Thus, cooking dinner is not only a task but already a project. Consequently, each of us is a project leader. In many ways our life depends on the fact how we can manage our projects. Can we meet the deadline and fit the agreed budget? I don’t insist on making flowcharts and Gantt charts before starting a sweep-up of your flat. I just wanted to show that even such simple projects which are repeated many times in our usual life very often exceed the appointed schedule and can even fail. So while performing most projects having only experience and common sense is not enough, the suitable task management approach is also necessary, and task management software.
Thus, any housewife can be a real project manager and, who knows, maybe in the course of time this common housewife will decide to start his own career. The better she manages her everyday household chores, the better project manager she is likely to become.
- preparing a wedding or birthday party
- travelling to the sea or abroad
- entering an institute
- building a house
- purchasing a car
- flat redecorating
And these projects are big enough but every day we perform many other smaller projects – from daily shopping to cooking supper. Why don’t we consider them projects? We call them ‘everyday routine’. But if we think carefully, we’ll realize that all these ‘daily tasks’ are chains of tasks and sometimes require some kind of task tracker.
In order to cook dinner, one has to decide who will go shopping and what should be bought, who will cook dinner and how long and, finally, who will wash the dishes after the dinner. And now tell me, please, how often you have to run to the shop if the list of the necessary products hasn’t been made correctly or hasn’t been made at all.
If you have invited very important guests, your dinner not prepared in time can derail negotiations or embarrass your guests and the evening will be wholly bad. And who doesn’t know the consequences of prolonged repair works? In these cases quarrels and scandals in the family are guaranteed.
By definition, every project has an aim, beginning and deadline. Thus, cooking dinner is not only a task but already a project. Consequently, each of us is a project leader. In many ways our life depends on the fact how we can manage our projects. Can we meet the deadline and fit the agreed budget? I don’t insist on making flowcharts and Gantt charts before starting a sweep-up of your flat. I just wanted to show that even such simple projects which are repeated many times in our usual life very often exceed the appointed schedule and can even fail. So while performing most projects having only experience and common sense is not enough, the suitable task management approach is also necessary, and task management software.
Thus, any housewife can be a real project manager and, who knows, maybe in the course of time this common housewife will decide to start his own career. The better she manages her everyday household chores, the better project manager she is likely to become.
